‘Shoppers opting for in-store deals over rapid deliveries’

Cost of living pressures are prompting consumers to move away from rapid online grocery delivery services, also known as q-commerce, as they continue to hunt for in-store deals and discounts.

According to latest research from Pricer, just seven per cent of shoppers now use q-commerce grocery deliveries, where online orders are delivered by services like Getir, JustEat or UberEats once a month. While a further 7 per cent opt for fast-format grocery ecommerce deliveries once a week, a fifth (19 per cent) of shoppers now use q-commerce less than once a month for food purchases, and over half (54 per cent) of consumers say they have never used high-speed convenience deliveries. 

Meanwhile, according to a separate poll by NTT Data, 59 per cent of those shoppers who do use q-commerce apps are doing so less frequently.

IGD estimates that an average q-commerce basket is 18 per cent more expensive than a convenience store, many consumers are opting to switch their spend back to in-store shopping where they have more choice, and can compare the price of more goods at the shelf edge. 

Pricer’s research showed that 40 per cent say they are shopping more in supermarkets now compared to a year ago, while 83 per cent say they are much more likely to compare prices at the shelf-edge in a bid to keep the cost of food bills down, up +21 percentage points year-on-year.

Peter Ward, country manager for UK & Ireland at Pricer, said: “Q-commerce, previously the posterchild for pandemic ecommerce, quickly rose in both popularity and consumer adoption during covid-19.

“However, its trajectory has cooled somewhat as consumers, hit with cost-of-living pressures, and facing stubbornly high grocery price inflation, have reassessed how and where they shop in order to make their food spend go further.”

At the same time, 61 per cent of price-conscious shoppers have switched some of their grocery shop from their usual supermarket brands to discounters, such as Aldi or Lidl.  However, while cheaper prices were behind 90 per cent of switchers, 19 per cent cited more choice of own-brand and value ranges as their motivation for switching to discount grocers.  A further 17 per cent said discounters offered better quality products compared with the Big Four, and 14 per cent said discounters offered more choice of products in general.